Blind Quote by Leslie Jamison

To tell you the truth, I don't edit much at all. Most times, when I have finished the first draft, that's the book. Of…

— Per Petterson

I always write a draft version of the novel in which I try to develop, not the story, not the plot, but the possibilities…

— Mario Vargas Llosa

I'm a passionate believer in revision, and a lot of my writing gets done during revision process. It isn't just tweaking: I tend to…

— John Jeremiah Sullivan

I was a lot dumber when I was writing the novel. I felt like worse of a writer because I wrote many of the…

— Miranda July

I write a ridiculous number of drafts. The characters change and grow through the drafting, and my understanding of them deepens. Creating characters in…

— Robert Boswell

A good edit process turns rocks into diamonds, and every author should love that part as much as the creative phase. I do love…

— Kim Smith

I write first drafts feverishly fast, and then I spend years editing. It's not that sentence-by-sentence perfectionist technique some writers I admire use. I…

— Porochista Khakpour

Only in very rare circumstances will you see something cut out of my first drafts. Maybe it's because of the way I write. I'm…

— R. A. Salvatore

If you're having trouble finishing a book, it might be that you're trying to fix it as you go. Just finish the story, no…

— Kimberly Willis Holt

Every first draft sucks, so when you have your favorite novel, and you're like, 'Wow, this is a masterpiece,' and then you write your…

— Tomi Adeyemi

I'm trying to break myself of that habit [of not writing out a first draft ] because I'm working on a couple novels and…

— Donald Ray Pollock

My first drafts are always terrible, and I hate them, but the process for me is all about writing the bad version until it…

— Jesse Andrews